Championships aren’t won by genius moves. World title matches are decided by nerves, time pressure and blunders.

“I would simply say that my nerves held on better,” Vishy Anand of India said after retaining his championship this week. “I simply hung on for dear life.”

Anand was tied 6-6 with challenger Boris Gelfand of Israel when they began the overtime phase of the $2.5 million match that began in Moscow last month.

They played four “rapid” tiebreakers, with 25 minutes apiece in each game. The first was drawn, but in the next, Gelfand blundered on move 71 and lost.

In the third game Anand conceded, “I was just lost, of course” after about 23 moves. But Gelfand, short of time, missed two winning shots, and the game was drawn. So was the anti-climactic fourth game.

Gelfand appeared disgusted with himself in the post-match press conference. “I think the decisive factor was that I did not make use of my time so wisely,” he said.

“He missed at least one chance to better his score in every tiebreaker,” fellow GM Peter Svidler said.

Anand has now won the world chess federation championship five times — once in a knockout tournament, once in a round-robin, twice in slow-time-control matches and now in a rapid tiebreaker.